Description

Last updated at 7:19, 28 Jul 2015Uploaded at 20:18, 7 Feb 2012

Requires Skyrim version 1.9.32.0.8 or higher.

NOT SUPPORTED ON OLDER VERSIONS!!!

Open Cities Skyrim is a comprehensive project that aims to bring back at least part of the feel of Morrowind - specifically how most of the cities were a natural part of the world and you could just walk in without loading screens. The added immersion and realism goes a long way, probably a lot more than you might think. Ever wanted to ride your horse into the center of Riften? Well now you can. Need to get some help from the city guards to vanquish a foe? Run toward the gates and the guards will do their duty while you can seek safety within the walls. The town guards make for some very interesting interactions this way. This will also make running dragon battles that much more interesting since the flow of the battle won't be interrupted by the loading screen and all of the city guards can be involved at the same time.

Installation Requirements

Official Skyrim patch 1.9.32.0.8 or greater.

SKSE 1.6.9+ and SkyUI 3.2+ are required in order to use the in-game configuration menu. They are NOT required in general for the mod itself.

SKSE 1.7+ is strongly recommended if you are having trouble with ILS/CTD issues. See the troubleshooting section of the readme.

Compatibility

Mods which strictly replace vanilla textures or the vanilla meshes are 100% compatible.

Generally speaking, any mod which adds things to the closed cities will be incompatible.

City mods that add some details to the open worldspace will be partially compatible.

The Last Defeat of the Dragon Cult - The mod hasn't been updated since March. It's navmeshes are partially corrupted and must be repaired.

In March of 2013, Bethesda released their final patch for Skyrim. Version 1.9.32.0.8. Prior to this, Open Cities Skyrim had little trouble operating in the available memory the game provided.

It has since been found though that Patch 1.9 changed something about the way Skyrim allocates its initial pools of memory, likely due to trying to get the DLC to work on the PS3 and then not bothering to make sure the PC had, you know, PC specific code for that.

The end result is that when traveling, either on foot or by fast travel, it becomes possible for you to run into problems with ILS/CTD issues. This is especially true in Windhelm and almost guaranteed to happen when trying to get back from Solstheim. It's also likely to happen when fast traveling from one city to another, and CTD may result when trying to enter some interiors after you arrive.

Fortunately the community has devised a solution to this problem in the form of a pre-load memory patch. There are several options for these now, but the one I most strongly recommend is shipping as part of SKSE now beginning with SKSE 1.7. In order to configure SKSE 1.7 to resolve this problem, you simply need to make sure your skse.ini file in Data/SKSE contains at least the following lines:

[Memory]DefaultHeapInitialAllocMB=768ScrapHeapSizeMB=256

This should resolve the problem on all but the heaviest of load orders. If you still have issues, then you can try either raising the 768 value to 1024, or install ENBoost which will help further reconfigure how RAM is used by the game. There are limits to this, so be careful. Skyrim can only have a maximum of 4GB even on a 64 bit system with boatloads of RAM. Allocate too much to either of the two SKSE settings and you'll be right back where you started with the ILS/CTD problem.

My own load order has 96 active mods, and the SKSE settings alone turned it from totally unstable to fairly rock solid reliable.

Compatibility Patches In The Patch Archive

Official Hearthfire DLC: Transfers the AI markers and triggers for the adoptable children into the open worldspace.Official Dawnguard DLC: Transfers spawn markers for radiant quests into the open worldspace.CL Cities - Whiterun: Adjusts navmesh data and makes copies of objects from CL Whiterun into the open worldspace.Skyrim Sewers 4: Provides access to the sewer areas from the open city spaces.Drinking Fountains of Skyrim: Copies the drinking fountain objects into the open city spaces. Patch written by Hanaisse.